The Creative Experience
Last week I hinted there is something else I want to publish here, in this little space of opportunity my blog has suddenly revealed.
I don’t feel ready, but I know I never will.
I will post my short stories – one a month, starting from January (date undetermined, but I may announce one to encourage myself).
Oof. Terrifying!
But it’s in writing now. It’s a commitment – you heard it here first – it will happen.
Today, I am borrowing another’s words to speak about the daily experience of making creative work happen, a paragraph from my latest read, ‘Creatrix, she who makes’ by Lucy H. Pearce.
The words were an arrow straight to my soul, perfectly encapsulating my current work struggle. Turns out I’m not alone.
“My ability to see projects through feels exasperatingly slow to me. Whilst I love to create, much of the time it is not particularly pleasurable or enjoyable…I am constantly frustrated with myself, with the process and with its results. I am all too aware of my own flaws and limitations. My terror of releasing my work makes me ill. But still I create, because to do so is slightly less stressful than not creating…
Creatrix: she who makes by Lucy H. Pearce p.30
I live under the constant urgency to birth not only this current project, but knowing that the next five are backing up behind it. Each big book takes two years – so that is ten years worth of books going around my head most of the time before I’ve worked through the backlog of other ideas that I currently have gestating within me. And more ideas are joining up behind all the time. I have more ideas than I know what to do with. And less energy than I need to live my life.”
It is glorious when another’s words echo your own experience. The quote articulates the tension I feel between my teetering stack of ideas (children’s books, print designs, poetry books, short stories, non-fiction books, workshops, product designs, the list goes on), other parts of life, as well as also carving out necessary rest and replenishment.
Thank you, Lucy, for making me feel that this sense of frustration is normal. I hope if this tension is familiar to you, that Lucy’s words give you the same momentary sense of peace they have brought me.
Until next time glorious one,
